Winning Poetry Stories 2022
Other Woman by Pamela Scobie
No one remembers my name.
(No one can pronounce it.)
But Sylvia… “Ah! Sylvia!” they exclaim.
“Isn’t she the one who..?”
Of course you were.
Sylvia. Domestic goddess, cake baker, devoted mother.
Could you have predicted I would spend more years than you did with your children?
Me, the slattern, the bitch, the barren one. His Lilith of Abortions.
He liked me barren. Barren doesn’t get in the way of sex or poetry.
Sylvia! Aery spirit, swatted by the patriarchy
(whose poems you shredded when he didn’t pay you enough attention).
Snatched before you could know success. Did you factor that in?
Me, gifted in too many directions, with no real drive,
measuring myself (as you did) by the man I was with.
Famous only as the woman who murdered Sylvia Plath.
Plucky little orphan Plath!
So in love with martyrdom, you even wanted to be Jewish!
You can’t force love any more than you could force me not to love
my Ultimate Man.
I tried to stand up to you.
In your bed, in the death flat, I bled out the abortion.
Next time, I told myself. Next time I shall keep it.
Your face always between us in the darkness.
Your bite marks on his Desperate Dan cheek.
Six years we dragged the corpse of our love around with us,
and he had not the courage to end it. Men!
How can they rule the world when they are such cowards?
He just got bored with me. Men do
get bored with us. With our unhappiness.
Shuratchka is not the first child I have killed.
She is the one I let live. My gift to him.
“Your daughter,” he said. “Your child.”
As if I had fathered her on him, wilfully to impede the Great Work.
So I have taken her back.
No one remembers her, either.
No one remembers my name. You can call me anything.
Sylvia, if you like.
It’s as good as any other.
Nudist in my Confidence by Alex Payne
I wish I walked henceforth naked, clothed only in carnation crowns,
Loose of the dignity we cultivated
To keep us from the shame of looking down.
From then I’d cross the flowered mountain passes
And wear down worn trails under calloused bare feet,
Until warm dust kicks up unto my muscles
And I become gilt in an earth born dry heat.
But no worries would occur upon this,
For waterlilies are whiter on the eve,
And would be loud candles to my pale calmness
Dipped in a solstice pool of cool reprieve,
And through the passing of flowing artesian waters
Would a nightgown of twilight come to cover me,
And toward the pine trees summon the shadow porters
To whisk the nocturnes into such brilliant creativity.
But despite this, what I’d most savour, is falling asleep beneath the stars,
Knowing across the light years of distant miles,
That the shimmer of my being carries just as far.
I want Emu back by Gavin Lumsden
That long-legged floppy bird couldn’t fly
but with my forearm up her spine
she jumped back to life,
black button eyes quizzing,
hungry marzipan beak probing
as we sped by Dad’s room,
slid down the short banister,
swooshed over Grandad in the rocking chair
reading Marshal Zhukov’s defence of Stalingrad,
while Granny perched on the sofa,
watched Fanny Cradock and wrote
recipes on a packet of Embassy.
We’d wing our escape to the small, walled garden
where my hand maiden fed me grass,
nibbled my ear, whispered a stupid joke.
On the patch of lawn, I straightened
her long, rustling foil feathers,
tails of paradise that were her downfall,
for the moulting toy left a trail of glittering debris
that riled the old lady ruling our roost
after mother fell out the nest.
That exiled Dundee dancing queen,
who I loved as a bringer of peppery Stovies,
one day showed her mettle,
swooping on my companion as she lay idle,
while the dust men hollered in the street.
Ignoring my protests, she marched
with that poor puppet and flung it
in their lorry’s grinding jaws.
I still have the white rocker,
no longer usurped by the socialist
I learned later beat Gran on Saturday nights.
As I sit here, rolling, it’s that bird I want back.
I’d pop her on the seat beside me,
stroke her thinned, crumpled tresses,
mend her mouth and fix an eye,
then tell her about my life, my wife,
our children, who never saw her zany grin,
and, like me, couldn’t save her from the bin.
Damson in Distress by Gwyn Thomas
Moss-green rash covering the last thin ring
advances along the brandy-snap branches
as the owl-brown tree hardens in the garden
and succumbs to become its own shadow.
On each dud bud hangs a solitary word
that should have stayed sealed inside my head.
Each one a blameless plum but the harvest
is a crop of regret, ripe only for burning.
Crimson fire-crackle crumbles the brittle tree
and the scorch of remorseful thoughts marks
the time to cauterise spite and seek release,
if not peace.
Clapham Common – In memory of Sarah Everard
by Dave Wynne-Jones
24/6/20 – The Independent:
“Black Lives Matter protests have not led to a spike in coronavirus cases,
research says, ‘we find no evidence that urban protests reignited Covid-19 case
growth during the more than three weeks following protest onset.’”
Crossing the dark common,
walking Covid-empty precincts,
listening for footsteps,
did Sarah worry about
the “nutter on the bus” now stalking the streets,
not muttering to himself but shouting at women,
with rape convictions at an all-time low?
Or wonder how many cell-phone calls for help
end up only recording their owners’ murders
in a culture that sees women as sex objects?
No wonder her death led to protest onset.
Glass jars shelter candleflames from the breeze,
amongst piles of flowers embanking the bandstand,
flaring as dusk and the women gather.
The vigilant at their vigil hold aloft
cell-phone lights, so few now carry lighters,
a healthy crowd, vaccinated or
so young the risk of Covid is minute,
masked and socially distanced just like the police,
who suddenly decide speeches aren’t permitted,
start pushing, shoving, trying to break up the crowd.
Burly officers wrestle to the ground
and handcuff women, later claiming,
“the risks of transmitting COVID-19 at the vigil
were too great to ignore.”
Flowers are trampled, glass broken,
candles stamped out,
and the man charged with the murder
is one of their own.
Helen Cox
Competition Judge : Writer and Coach
Helen Cox is a Yorkshire-born novelist and poet with an MA in Literature and Creative Writing from the University of York St John. Helen has produced two poetry pamphlets and has had individual poems published in Popshot Magazine, Riggwelter, Visual Verse, Pop the Culture Pill and the TL;DR Women’s Anthology, among many others. She frequently runs online poetry workshops that are free to no income and low income poets and runs an annual masterclass for advanced writers in the craft. Helen also hosts The Poetrygram Podcast.
